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#FICABill: The Myth of Economic Policy Stability

President Jacob Zuma has finally signed the Financial Intelligence Centre Act Bill. This could mean one of three things. If the first, we owe him an apology; if the second, we can relax a little; if the third, we must brace ourselves because winter is coming and it’s cold outside the ANC.

I once read a book. It was a difficult experience for me — not because it was the only time I’d read a book, but because of a story it told.

A father was out with his young son. The kid wanted to run around and play. “Sure,” his father said, “but don’t run on the bank.” The kid nodded, excited, before he took off to frolic on the forbidden bank. His dad yelled, “No running on the bank!” The kid nodded, but kept at it. Eventually, his father dragged him off the grass and spanked him. “What part of, ‘No running on the bank!’ didn’t you understand?”

His teary baby eyes blinking up, he asked, “Daddy, what’s a bank?”

That’s how tragically wrong the conspiracy theories around President Jacob Zuma could turn out to be. He’s signed FICA, after all.

The second possibility is that the conspiracy theories are true but he’s changing his ways or losing ground. This would make sense, when you look, also, at the Western Cape High Court ruling on behalf of NGOs Earthlife Africa and the Southern Africa Faith-Communities’ Environmental Institute: the run-up to nuclear energy deal was unconstitutional, the court said.

The third possibility is that as in rhetoric where a debater would concede a point in order to strengthen his initial position, Jacob Gedliyehlekisa Zuma is living up to his names — supplanter, mocker and ambusher: conceding only to lure into a trap.

He’s neither innocent kid being punished for a crime he doesn’t understand, nor short-sighted ruler who, “going out to encounter another king in war” embarrasses himself by not first deliberating “whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand”. If he’d realized the error of his ways he’d be asking for amnesty. His plan is not to shield the shady transactions that will be exposed to further-reaching investigations of FICA, but to threaten retaliation through said FICA.

When the State of Capture report emerged last year, the ANC Women’s League responded, “Any investigation which excludes white monopoly capital is an advancement of white supremacy and serves a racial political agenda that hinders the building of a non-racial society.” Once you deepen investigations into relationships between high-profile political persons and big money, who decides that banking transactions flagged only yesteryear should be looked into? Did something happen in, say, 1994, that expunged the sinfulness of all state-capital relationships until then? Gotcha! Unless the Bill explicitly carries a statue of limitations around how far back anyone can investigate (something Zuma could have highlighted) he will use it now that he has been forced to adopt it.

The moment the ANC stole bragging rights for our liberation, it became our Saviour and then our Lord. Jesus can’t come back to save us from the ANC because we’ve made the ANC into our Jesus, our golden calf. “These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” President Zuma is banking on the idea that once you turn on the lights on illicit state-capital relations, you stumble upon an explanation for the economic inequality the ANC promised to rescue the black electorate from in 1994. It would suddenly appear the apartheid State subsidized whiteness in a way that can only be rectified by the “radical economic transformation” the President will whet his MPs to vote for in June if not sooner. ZumaTradeOff: A bigger reshuffle is on the cards sought to explain why President Zuma wants to keep his finger close to that trigger. Therefore, he is not afraid of the FICA Bill and if he were, Minister Gigaba could delay its gazetting.

While we’re on Minister Gigaba, someone should warn him that he’s starting to look and sound like Pontius Pilate. Until eternity’s last day, Pilate will boast an ecclesiastical honour known to no human save for Mother Mary: he’s one of the only two individuals named as having interacted with Jesus in the Christian Nicene Creed chanted by millions of believers weekly around the world. Unlike the Virgin, however, Gigaba and Pilate will be caught in history’s spotlight denuded of core, conviction and character. Both suffer from what Turkish historian Kenneth Weisbrode calls the “problems and pleasures of having it both ways.” Is Gigaba about “radical economic transformation” (which is dog-whistle politics for another thing altogether) or “inclusive economic growth” (that whistle is deafening)? Or will he not really know until he’s caught between a spear and a machine gun?

For he evades — look at the spin around the credit ratings downgrade. He equivocates — “The views expressed in [Professor Chris Malikane’s] opinion piece [on land expropriation without compensation] are not necessarily government policy.” He enables — guilty by association with the Gupta family. Already he buckles under the weight of making the call to choose between crucifying South Africa’s economic Barabbases and Jesuses.

Not knowing who or what he is, media and markets will squeeze him to see what comes out of his slim frame until, finally, he will be squeezed by the 32, 000-pound bus Zuma will throw him under.

President Jacob Zuma, The Unburnt Chief of Nkandla’s Fire Pools, Maker of Chains, Father of Draconian state brutalities and Not-First of Unspeakable Names, signed FICA into law.

Those winds we’re hearing could be the winds of change but if we change nothing, they signal that winter is coming.